The present disclosure generally relates to semiconductor memory devices. More particularly, the present disclosure relates to a method of driving a multipath-accessible shared bank memory device for low-level burst communications.
A semiconductor memory device having more than one access port may be called a multiport memory. In particular, a memory device having two access ports may be called a dual-port memory. A conventional dual-port memory is known in the art. For example, a conventional dual-port memory may be used as an image processing video memory. The conventional dual-port memory has one random access memory (RAM) port accessible in a random sequence and one serial access memory (SAM) port accessible only in a serial sequence, and is commonly known as dual-port RAM (DPRAM).
Another type of multiport memory includes an array of memory cells, such as dynamic random access memory (DRAM) cells, which can be accessed randomly through two or more ports. This type of device is called a multipath-accessible memory. A multipath-accessible memory is distinguishable from a conventional multiport memory, in which only one of the two or more ports supported random access.